It is 200 years before the birth of Christ and Rome is the burgeoning superpower of the ancient world. With each conquest her empire grows. No one can stand in her way. But one man is destined to challenge all that. A man bound by oath to avenge the wrongs inflicted on his home, Carthage in North Africa - the empire that ruled the Mediterranean before Rome stole its crown; a man who's pathological hatred of Rome knows no bounds. In pursuit of revenge he will stop at nothing. From his exile in Spain, 26-year-old Hannibal Barca was the mastermind behind what is arguably the most audacious military move in history. With 40,000 soldiers and 37 elephants he marched 1500 miles from Spain through the wild Pyrenees into the savage lands of the Gauls of France, across the raging Rhone and finally through the snow-gripped mountain passes of the fearsome Alps to challenge his enemies on their own soil - an act so daring that few people believed it possible. The campaign that follows is so brutal, so violent, so savage, that it almost defies belief. Hannibal destroys the Roman myth of invincibility by defeating the great nation and army not once, but three times, the third defeat being the most utterly crushing and terrible that Rome endured in her entire history. Then he rides, unchallenged, to the gates of the great city and taunts his enemies as they cower inside. Hannibal Barca comes within a whisker of destroying Rome, his greatest enemy.